Wednesday, June 16, 2004

The Deng Mangalagu Project

500 friends.

Well it has been ages since I touched my friendster account. I only finally got to manage it today.
It all started out as a way for me to waste company money while not taking calls. January saw the end of a very gargantuan queue over the hoidays.

My friendster account was getting really boring. Everybody I knew who ever bothered to create an account was already in my friends list. Those who I invited, but didnt know personally, either accepted my invitations, you know, just to be polite, or rejected them because they thought I was psycho. My online life was going to the dogs.

Then I got this bright Idea.

Since most of the people I invite at friendster are girls (pretty ones at that), I thought, "Why not create a profile just for girls, -- Kapampangan Girls!"

I originally used one of my junk email ads as the target email ad and signed up as "Deng Mangalagu". Kapampangan for "the pretty ones". First, I invited the ones I knew. Made testimonials for them. It was pretty standard it went:
_____ is a CERTIFIED KAPAMPANGAN BEAUTY!!!
'ala ng lalagu pa kareng KAPAMPANGAN!!!

Come February, girls were starting to ask for invitations to my new profile. I got an average of 10 friend requests a day. I was lucky to get 3 in a day in my personal account. Surprisingly enough, a lot of these girls hail from the States and Europe.

The testimonials they give are equally amusing. Here are som examples:

"Pampanga chicks have a touch of elegance, an aura of sophistication, are intellectual and are gosh dengit very beautiful indeed. I miss Pampanga! Y'all will always rock and I'm proud to be one indeed! We'll forever be malagu =P Mwa to all!"-Christine

"The true beauty of a woman is reflected in her soul; it is the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she shows; The beauty of a woman with passing years only grows ..." Kapampangan beauty reigns forever! -Nikki

"I'm in Sales & Marketing so i always meet different kinds of people, usually the male species when they learn that I'm from Pampanga they would always have this same line that goes..."Kapampangan ka? Ahh kaya pala maganda ka!" kasi daw magaganda ang mga kapampangan.THIS IS TRUE! Need i say more?"

-Shanna

One very important thing I learned with this experiment is that Kapampangan Girls like to set themselves apart. They like the fact that they are being considered the prettiest of all Filipinas. It has, I think, something to do with the Kapampangan pre-disposition of being "mayabang". Just as much as the Ilocano has the same of being "kuripot".

I even had a guy congratuate me for reaching 500 friends. I would have posted his message but of course, silly me, I accidentally erased it.

I was in a rush to make the second account. We have a firewall in the office banning Friendster to be accessed through the intranet. Luckily, all you need to do is poke the refresh button a few times, the login page gets to resolve. I still havent put in my verification code but i already had 2 friends waiting to be accepted. Not to mention some copycats like "lalagu lagu girls" and "Kapampangan Hunniez".